Posted
by
CmdrTacoon Thursday June 16, 2011 @12:08PM
from the no-cameras-please dept.

An anonymous reader writes "A patent application filed by Apple, and obtained by the Times, reveals how the software would work. If a person were to hold up their iPhone, the device would trigger the attention of infra-red sensors installed at the venue. These sensors would then instruct the iPhone to disable its camera."

For that matter, do we really need another round of people who don't like company X attacking company X for filing a patent on something they object to, pretending not to understand that tech companies never implement 90% of what they patent? Seriously, remember those articles about Apple patenting OS-level advertising that locked people out of their computers until they watched it? Seen any Macs or iOS devices doing that lately?

For that matter, do we really need another round of people who don't like company X attacking company X for filing a patent on something they object to, pretending not to understand that tech companies never implement 90% of what they patent?

Why are you apologizing for objectionable behavior? If I drew up 10 objectionable plans, and only implemented 1 of them, does that excuse the other 9 somehow? Here's an idea: Don't draw up the objectionable plan in the first place. If you do, expect some grief over it.

It's just an invention that they are making a legal claim of ownership of.

They do this so that they may at some point make use of it. They made decide not to. The fact that they see potential in it is the problem.

Yet another apologist.

Sorry, being able to discern between reality and fantasy does not make one an apologist.

Reality is Apple has countless patents that they never make use of. Reality is some companies reward or otherwise encourage employees to submit patents. Reality is simply having a patent, even one a company never intends to use, can be of strategic value. Reality is, this is an invention, worthy of patenting.

Nevermind the fact that companies like Apple patent things they never implement.

They patent things because they may want to implement them.

That's *a* reason. Another reason is that someone else might want to implement them. Another reason is that a camera maker, like Kodak, might want to sue Apple, and such a patent would give them leverage.

Oh, btw. A camera maker (Kodak) is suing Apple right now, and camera related patents would have helped Apple greatly.

Another reason is that it's an invention, and it's always nice to have a patent on an invention, even if you see no point in it right now. Another reason is employees get incentivized to take

Except that last one was general to all cameras, this one is specific to iphones.

Maybe the application for patenting it on all cameras maybe got turned down. It seems like trying to patent anything but the sun gets approved, but maybe some government official realized that if Apple has the exclusive rights to this valuable censorship technology, that could prevent it from being rolled out. Maybe Steve Jobs would say "Okay, you've made it mandatory that all cameras have this in them, so now I have a mon

Fox gets far more right than you'd ever like to admit. Anytime you say "always" or "never" you're automatically wrong. Fox News is worth watching for the stories that they uncover that the rest of the media tries as hard as possible to Ignore. If you want to remain in your blissful ignorance you can ignore FN, since it is only for those who want to be as informed as possible. Without FN you might not have heard about this story at all.

No, customer.. you will take it up the butt because that's what the MAFIAA wants.

Isn't it also the fact that BluRay players need extra CPU power just because it has to decrypt the disc content, and probably re-encrypt it for the HDMI stream, which your display unit then needs to have CPU power to decrypt? Geez, I wonder who's paying for all that hardware?

Yeah... yet another confirmation Apple is working for the evil assholes.

You would be when you find out you cant take a picture of your friends at a venue. You would post a question to apple.com forums, and it would be deleted. You would then post another question, thinking you made a mistake posting the first one, and your forum account would be banned. Then you'd google the problem and find this and other articles.

Ok, and exactly WHY as a iPhone customer, would I want such 'feature' on my phone?? Rather limiting I'd say.

Exactly so. What a huge sales disincentive.

Far be it from me to suggest Apple is doing something altruistic, but let me toss this out there:

Were they doing us all a favor by locking up this technology so that venues couldn't deploy it and/or demand it on all smart phones?

Seems vaguely possible, since without wide adoption in all handsets, this technology is useless, and won't be deployed anywhere. A patent is actually counter productive in the eyes of the venues and rights holders, as it limits the ability to deploy this.

Apple themselves would have little incentive to add yet another cripple feature in their phones considering that the competition would add no such thing. Unless Apple lobbied for smartphone exclusion zones, with the iPhone given a pass there would be no market incentive for this feature.

So why patent something that would be a huge sales disincentive if actually deployed?

Some middle eastern countries are cracking down on photos in public places, but I doubt they have a big enough market for this.

1st. It would nice not to get a lawsuit for an innocent act, if the phone stopped you from doing it, you won't get in trouble for doing it.

2nt. It is a Patent not a Feature. How they use this patent is up to Apple. because of #1 I would be iffy if apple uses it, as it opened a wider can of worms, if the iPhone will stop you from doing an illegal act then who would be responsible for other illegal acts done by the phone... If Apple is going to be the guardian, then it may mean your safe. Apple may have no

Nope, nope, and nope. I don't believe that there is a criminal law concerning photographs taken during concerts. Museums? Again - are you talking criminal law? Come on - you're talking about "terms of service" kind of "agreements", when I asked about "legal".

Hey, I DO NOT agree to have my camera confiscated, disabled, or blocked if I go to a concert. Nor do I agree to refrain from snapping photos of anything I might see at a museum. Everyone carried cameras on our class trips in school!

I'll be the first to admit that I'm no Apple fan, but maybe... just maybe they're patenting this so that no one else can do it, thus effectively keeping this "innovation" from ever seeing the (infrared) light of day. Kind of like a defensive patent.

No rule says that they have to put this into any product. Or am I just too optimistic?

No reason, except that the fact that you bought an iPhone, is itself a statement that you desire electronics which serve other parties' interests in preference to your own.

This is such a misguided statement that I don't even know where to start. You really aren't thinking that through.

I think the problem here is that Slashdotters are always comparing Apple's successful mass-market products and services to some Stallman-esque ideal service that doesn't exist -- or, worse, falling for some transparent marketing (like thinking the PS3 was a great console because it "ran Linux").

In the case of the iPhone, it's worth remembering the cell phone market that existed before iPhone 1.0. Those devices were entirely beholden to the interests of your cell phone provider. If they had an app store (and many did) it would be controlled by your provider. If they could play music, your provider would determine where you could get that music from. Your phone would be loaded up with crapware out of the box, again controlled by your provider.

For typical users the iPhone is way more open than the previous situation. iTunes allows music from virtually any source and any music you buy there will work on any modern device. Although there are restrictions on the app store, it is far more open than the previous carrier-curated equivalents. Music services like Pandora/etc, video services like Netflix, etc are available without having to pay any any additional monthly fee to your provider. I think it's absurd to suggest that the only reason anyone would want access to the Apple app store is because they don't care about their own interests.

So now you're comparing to Android, and I guess you think you have your utopia platform, but I'm here to disagree. If you're rational about the parties involved in Android, you have to see the way the product is designed to serve their interests over yours:

1. The carriers. With Android carriers gain more control over the software delivered on their phones than is available with iOS. Some carriers abuse this, others do not; the point is that they have additional power over the user and they are going to use it if it serves their needs. This is why it's not surprising that the carriers have stocked so many Android phones in their stores and pushed them to their customers. When people say that Android is "open", what they mostly mean is that the carriers have control.2. Google. Android on the Google side is conceived as a powerful platform to sell the users to advertisers. While Apple runs an advertising platform, iAd, that is optionally available to app developers, no ads from iAd appear on the device unless a user installs an app that uses it. In contrast, Android phones are deeply integrated with Google's very profitable ad-supported services -- GMail, Google search, Google Maps, etc. For Google, the user is not the customer; the advertisers are. So whose interests are being served here?

We can argue all day about whether it matters who the customer is, but I think it does. I prefer to pay for things myself rather than be sold to someone else, partly because I don't trust myself to be immune to the influence of pervasive advertising. If I wanted to run something on the iPhone that wasn't allowed on the app store I'd just jailbreak it, like Android people do when their carriers lock the phone down. So far I haven't encountered such a need.

But whether this way of looking at it makes sense or not (I think it's disgusting), you know that the device is hostile to your desires (if not hostile to your ultimate interests of getting along with others).

Apple's customers are their users. That's where they get their money from. This is in contrast to, say, Google, whose customers are the advertisers, and their users are the product.

The flaw in your argument is this: the FSF nerd is not Apple's target demographic. *YOU* want something that almost no one else wants. Apple wants to sell things that are more desirable to more people. In fact, it's *YOUR* desires that are hostile to the wants and interests of the average person. If you had your way, people would

A) Infrared is line of sight, so if it's a separate sensor, you stick a piece of metallic duct tape over it, and problem is solved.
B) Companies will begin selling small dots of IR filtering tape that you can stick on the lens of the camera. Price is $5 for a sheet. Problem is solved.

It seems that no matter the implementation of this, the workaround is trivial.

But 5 million others will, and if something of public interest is going on, say police brutality, and they try to record it with their camera phone, but it's been disabled, say, by police IR equipment, that kind of affects us all, doesn't it?

But 5 million others will, and if something of public interest is going on, say police brutality, and they try to record it with their camera phone, but it's been disabled, say, by police IR equipment, that kind of affects us all, doesn't it?

Don't worry about it, it's not like we live in an iPhone-only society. The recent police shooting in Florida that made the news after it was filmed and the photographer was arrested was filmed using an HTC Evo, not an iPhone. There are enough people with non-Apple smartphones that make it so that anything that Apple does does not have the wide-ranging impact that everyone fears. Apple is just limiting its own customers, not everyone else. For now, anyway.

1) Whoever wrote that law would commit political suicide.2) Enforcing a law against the enforcers of the law can be difficult.3) At a time when SCOTUS shreds the Constitution into hamster bedding by repealing Miranda rights, allowing police to enter without a warrant and without knocking, allowing the feds wholesale warrantless surveillance of the entire citizenry, of what use is any law?

Wouldn't it make more sense to constantly emit the infra-red signal so that it affects all iPhones?

Wouldn't it make even more sense to just use a high power broad-spectrum IR emitter element in the projector and ruin the picture for practically all video recording equipment that doesn't run well into the thousands of dollars to block the IR completely?

Or maybe it makes even more sense to just ignore the people who are recording a movie off a theater screen even if they use an Arri cam to do so, as the quali

On its face, it is easy to imagine how this could infringe upon fair use rights among others. For example, if there was some person doing something annoying or funny or illegal or whatever and it happens to be in a theater, you should be able to record it for your purposes, needs or requirements. The fact that it is in a movie theater should not trump all other uses and needs.

Those darn infrared sensors ruin my day when I'm at a concert and need to transfer data with my IrDA port on my PowerBook 5300. I've been thinking about upgrading to 802.11a, but I've never really thought of myself as an early adopter and I'm really upset that Apple pulls these stunts to make us upgrade all the time.

But I think as soon as we start making such devices so they are geared to have copyright (and whim) enforced upon you, it's a bad thing.

Sooner or later, governments or police will be sure that you can't film them doing things they don't want by blanketing the place in IR that says "no recording". And, really, this will be abused both domestically, and abroad. Having the ability to shut off recording devices remotely is a horrible idea.

This is caving in way too much, and continues the trend that sooner or later we won't be able to have general purpose computers because rights-holders figure they're all going to be used to steal their stuff.

This technology is a Hammer of Freedom thrown at the screen to prevent your phone from being indoctrinated by Big Content. Apple is always looking out for your interests, which the haters just don't understand.

Gates understood, according to his testimony in the Clinton Justice Dept case, that it only takes one mistake to wipe a company out. This comes right on the heels of the location scare. This could blow up into "next they'll shutdown cameras during a Rodney King beating", and iPhone becomes the Brave New World gateway device.

AAPL must come out quickly and deal with this, otherwise this news could send customers and devs right into Android's welcoming arms.

This could blow up into "next they'll shutdown cameras during a Rodney King beating", and iPhone becomes the Brave New World gateway device.

And, given that I'm one of the people saying that... I personally fail to see how this technology wouldn't be abused.

Apparently, you can't publish pictures of the friggin' Eiffel tower, because some company owns the copyright on the lighting. Concert promoters will be all over this. Fireworks. Buildings. Public art. Free Speech Zones. Governments who have no qualms abusing their people (ok, that's all of them).

As someone who tends to carry a camera around an awful lot, the idea that someone else can disable that is a little worrying... if I'm in public, and if I can see it, I'm entitled to take a picture of it. I don't give a damn that some idiot asserts he owns the copyright to a building... I'm not copying the building, I'm taking a picture of my experiences.

Sure, Apple can use this to negotiate better deals on iTunes. But, speaking as someone who actually owns some Apple products... if they think I'm going to accept a limitation on when I can use my camera, they're horribly wrong.

This just puts too much power in the hands of people who I don't place any trust in.

Since Apple patented it, this means it doesn't (and theoretically can't) apply to anything but iPhones. So everyone else who has an Android, or Windows, or BB, or any other dumb camera phone is not only free, but PROHIBITED from having this "feature" unless the manufacturers license it from Apple.

Way to go, Apple, you just gave everyone one more reason NOT to buy an iPhone. I'm sure the theater owners will love installing a (probably) expensive IR gadget to catch the small percentage of camera phone owner

So everyone else who has an Android, or Windows, or BB, or any other dumb camera phone is not only free, but PROHIBITED from having this "feature" unless the manufacturers license it from Apple.

It sounds good, until Apple bribes the government to make it a requirement for phone cameras. Then everyone else is required to license it from Apple, and Apple gets more money to think up new ways to limit their customers and then apply it to everyone else.

And I want Apple to defend it with all the power it has... So that only Apple devices are blocked and all other devices are unaffected.

As if. Apple will get this, then they'll license it for an enormous sum to all the other cellphone companies when the Apple and police lobbies manage to get mandatory implementation of this enshrined in law.

Just another reason to (not) buy Apple in lieu of any other competing (cheaper, more flexible, less restricted) product in the marketplace. Can't wait to hear how the Apple Fanbois spin this one into making Apple products BETTER than anyone else's.

Before you know it you won't be Buying your next iPhone at all. You'll be Licensing it to use only under an ever increasingly long list of Terms & Conditions.

I remember thinking it would be useful to use the SSID of wireless access points to issue commands to cameras to disable things like the flash (useful in an art gallery for instance). It turns out there are already a whole bunch of patents which have been issued in the last 10 years which cover this idea.

...will be to patent the concept of defeating the tech that stops Iphone from recording video. Licence it for $1,000,000 per day or portion thereof. If you're caught defeating the anti-filming tech, Apple could bankrupt you. Remember also that in a civil lawsuit, they can destroy you financially just by suing you, even if you're eventually found not guilty.

Be happy that Apple patents this. That might mean that it will be limited exclusively to Apple products and that they'll sue any competing product out of the marketplace. I mean, who REALLY wants this in their next camera equipped product?

You go patent that tech and be sure to make licensing fees extra expensive so as Google and Microsoft continue to eat into your market share your "technology" grows incresingly irrelevent.

It is the height of hubris when one believes they have a market position allowing them to seek to actively prevent their customers from doing what they want with their devices. If you want to increase the rate of exodus to droid by all means full steam ahead.

Could this technology be sold to the rich, famous, and powerful? The next time you want to take a legal snapshot on a city street of your favorite star, might your iPhone suddenly refuse because they have a do-not-photograph beacon on their shoulder? Awesome!

"If a person were to hold up their iPhone, the device would trigger the attention of infra-red sensors installed at the venue. These sensors would then instruct the theater employees to come take your phone, escort you out of the theater, and beat you till you pass out."

"If a person were to hold up their iPhone, the device would trigger the attention of infra-red sensors installed at the venue. These sensors would then instruct the theater employees to disable your arms."

How would you tell the difference (in software) between "no infrared signal because I'm not in a movie theater" and "no infrared signal because I am in a movie theater and someone put tape over the sensor"?

How would you tell the difference (in software) between "no infrared signal because I'm not in a movie theater" and "no infrared signal because I am in a movie theater and someone put tape over the sensor"?

By putting this in the CCD that is the thing that takes the actual picture? If you do that, 'blocking' the filter means you block the lens.

Remember, these are digital cameras, so you do all of this stuff behind the lens. It's not like they're going to build a separate sensor which can be spoofed/blocked

Why is that? The CCDs used for the camera--while sensitive to IR--cannot distinguish between IR and visible wavelengths without expensive/additional camera hardware that serves little purpose. Not to mention the IR would have to be pulsed in a way so that you know the source of the light is one of the anti recording signals...the phone would have to do some heavy processing of each pixel to determine if there are any IR light sources pulsing in that manner...and the CCD may not even be acquiring an image

Wait a minute. The CMOS (not CCD IIRC) image sensor in the iPhone samples very, very slowly. At 30Hz, tops. The signal, to avoid problems with interference from flashing incandescents, etc, must be much faster than that. Think kilohertz. Probably the transmitter in the venue use standard 30-something kHz carrier used by remotes. You cannot sense this with a general purpose CMOS image sensor. You need a dedicated photodiode. Now of course they may go crazy and integrate a beam splitter in front of the image

And that's why when you patent an interdiction technology, you should also patent the method for defeating that technology. That way you can sue everyone for infringement.

BTW, TiVo stumbled upon something similar accidentally. A Series2 or earlier TiVo that needs to control an external tuner via IR cannot not do so if it is being exposed to infrared light. It delays sending the signal until the common IR signaling bus is clear. So if you had IR remote repeaters that were prone to RF interference, you might

I would like it to detect being in a movie theater and then disable the _screen_, not the camera.Then at least I could watch my movie in peace and as an additional benefit, it's almost impossible to film the movie without screen.

Hm...a "garden" surrounded by a fence, patrolled by a team of guards, and in which a select few people are allowed to come in for "visits." I think I have heard of real-life examples of such a set up, although people don't usually live in such facilities voluntarily.

ohhhhhh, I see what you're insinuating. The iPhone is like a golf course... Although I don't know if I'd refer to beverage cart girls as guards, you must be playing golf at a different country club than me.